MCM HAS CROSSED ‘RED LINE’ SAYS GREENS
By KELVIN SIABANA THE Green Party says Mopani Copper Mines (MCM) has crossed the red line by cancelling 300 contracts for Zambian suppliers and contractors in addition to its planned retrenchment of 4,700 miners.
Party president Peter Sinkamba said if Government has failed to veto the absurd MCM management through the Golden Share scheme, then it was high time President Edgar Lungu invoked the Emergency Powers Act to end the impunity of the company.
Mr Sinkamba said according to Section 3 Regulation 2 of the Emergency Powers Act, it empowers the President to take over, on behalf of the government any undertaking in an industry which has been declared a strategic industry by the President.
“Mines are classified as strategic industries and therefore eligible for compulsory acquisition if the manner in which management of the mine is running the company is inimical to State security and national economy," Mr Sinkamba said
Mr Sinkamba said he expected President Lungu to move in and deal with the issue of MCM personally because Parliament has given him the powers through the resolution which was overwhelmingly supported.
“A captured economy is thereby trapped in a vicious circle in which the policy and institutional reforms necessary to improve governance are undermined by collusion between powerful firms and state officials who extract substantial private gains from the absence of clear rule of law and interventions by government officials,” said Mr Sinkamba.
Mr Sinkamba said Mopani, has been operating for 17 years in Zambia and has not paid any dividends of the mandatory 20 percent to government and kept all the profits to itself.
He said and the mining company has laid off about 30,000 workers from 2000 during the privatisation process and planned to retrench more than 4,000 workers both in Mufulira and Kitwe offices.
He said the company has been giving petty businesses to Zambian suppliers and contractors with the bulk of businesses given to Peruvians and South Africans, even for the petty businesses, 300 such contracts have been terminated.
Mr Sinkamba said it was embarrassing that Mopani was failing to pay for electricity and owes Copperbelt Energy Corporation US$15 million and yet it was making a big profit from the copper sales whose price was almost US$7,000 a ton.